


lost my place but can't stop this story

by earlofcardigans



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-18
Updated: 2011-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-21 12:46:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlofcardigans/pseuds/earlofcardigans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Response to <a href="http://tsn-kinkmeme.livejournal.com/8388.html?thread=15054020#t15054020">this prompt</a> at the kinkmeme: a fic detailing how Mark and Eduardo met, how they became friends, how they became best friends and then the exact moment Eduardo fell in love with Mark or the exact moment he realised that he'd fallen in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lost my place but can't stop this story

Eduardo would like to say 'hey yeah, we were at an AEPi thing and Mark, he looked bored or lonely or whatever so I thought I'd go over and talk to him.' But it wouldn't be true. Because what happened was Eduardo was standing almost in the doorway, one foot practically out of it, ready to run, because Harvard was a big place full of people with weird faces and too many teeth in too big smiles and what he wanted most was to leave, but what happened was, Mark. Well, Mark came over and shoved a cup at Eduardo and started talking to him.

Eduardo was completely stunned, of course. First, because, well, what? In his experience so far he had to be the one to initiate anything and as much as Eduardo was a person that could go after things that he wanted if he needed to, this was never really something he felt he needed--friends, parties, drinking, all that extra stuff that his father had warned him about, that Eduardo himself had deemed distracting because if it wasn't distracting then it was too painful to think about.

And second because he had no idea what Mark was even saying. Something about his roommate and sabotage and then the Kelly Bluebook value of Toyota Corollas. Eduardo remembered smiling at him because honestly why was he talking about Toyotas and why was he talking to Eduardo of all people when he looked like he wanted to be anywhere in the world other than standing in front of him, and Mark stopped talking and Eduardo said 'I'm sorry?'

The first thing he ever said to Mark was 'I'm sorry.'  
==

Eduardo went out with Chris first. It wasn't that he didn't hang out with all of them in their suite or even that he Mark hadn't walked with him all the way back to his room once because he was talking so fast about something Eduardo only grasped the bare bones of, but he was walking across campus with someone that he considered his friend so he never said anything. But he never went out. So Chris asked him. They went for dinner with a few other people Chris knew and one or two of which Eduardo had met before because it was easier that way. Easier for Eduardo to pretend like he wasn't going slowly crazy with all the work he had decided he needed to do, pretend like he was a part of something that was like a normal experience, pretend he was from the same sorts of places as these people.

When he hung out with Dustin on his own the first time, he was almost starting to believe he was from the same sorts places and normal experiences. Eduardo almost believed that he was owed them as a real college experience. He had long, winding talks with Dustin. Once about the merits of Elmer's Glue versus rubber cement after they got spectacularly drunk. And he let Dustin elbow him in the side and call him a dick when he started too ramble too much about the ineficiency of how paper was made.

By the time Eduardo was there more than they had to call him, he still hadn't really been in Mark's space. Even though it was Mark who introduced him to the rest and Mark who let him in some nights when it was too dark and too cold to know what time it was and Mark who sat with him on the floor with their backs to the couch as they watched the ticker on CNN and Eduardo told him about how he learned to knit socks and Mark who silently passed him another beer.

Regardless of whatever else he did with whoever else was in the room or their circle, it was Mark who had, however consciously, memorized his schedule and it was Eduardo that was kinda grateful Mark never asked bigger questions of him, knew how to leave everything alone.  
==

After, they started spending more time alone together. Chris was Chris and Dustin was pretending like he had a life. Eduardo had given up pretending he wasn't completely fine with staying right where he was. And after they gave him a nickname because Dustin wanted to learn Portuguese while drunk, and Mark started calling him Wardo in front of people even if they were just people in the hall they were passing to get to Mark's room, Eduardo felt like he didn't have to be like that anymore anyway.

Mark talked at him a lot of the time, but Eduardo was very intelligent and even if Mark thought everyone was mentally incompetent including Eduardo, he didn't mind, it was just Mark after all. Sometimes they talked about Eduardo things. Like Mark looked up from whatever he was doing and find that Eduardo was trying to determine if all the clothes on the floor were dirty and if so he said 'What is anyone even wearing because even if it is college, someone should do laundry this semester', and Mark maybe in a bid to distract him said, 'So tell me Wardo things.'

Eduardo always took that to mean what was going on with him right then. So he told him about his professor with the actual, true story, taped eyeglasses, and the yet another Asian girl that tried to give him her phone number. (He was starting a theory on that because seriously. He was like a magnet.) Mark didn't care, not really. It was all a social interaction ruse and Eduardo was fine with playing his part if it got him a friend out of it.

He was starting to worry about himself a bit if this was all he was going to want out of life.

But Mark always pulled his attention back and maybe Eduardo told him something from when he was younger. Mark never outwardly looked surprised. But Eduardo could tell. He was always searching for the tiny differences that made Mark stand out, made him stand out to Mark.  
==

Mark had said it first. And Eduardo knew that he had meant it first, but he never said anything because when he said things like that to Mark, well. Mark tended to ignore him or do that thing with his face that told Eduardo he was no longer part of the very small percentage of people that Mark considered worthy enough to talk to. He usually just laughed at him when Mark acted like that, like he was better than the world. It was so funny. And Eduardo was realizing, had been realizing about himself and about Mark, that everything was a cover for something else almost all the time. And he laughed. Mark usually broke enough to smile back at him or threw something at him or tell him 'God Wardo. Why are you so fucking weird?'

That always made him laugh more and say 'Oh Mark, really. _You're_ calling someone weird. Whatever.'

Eduardo enjoyed being in some club with the head weirdos like it was a secret that they were really just like everyone else--a little shy, a little bit assholish, kinda needy, normal people.

When Mark had told him that they were best friends, that 'Wardo. Dude. Wardo oh my god. You are my best friend. The best ever.' Eduardo was for sure that he was sicker than he was letting on. It was more than he ever really said about Eduardo, but Eduardo was holding the soup and the big blanket and the bag from the pharmacy. Eduardo wanted to take his temperature, ask if he was alright, but Mark was already half asleep and he looked disgusting. He only sort of wondered, just in the back of his mind where it was safer to do so, if Mark would be okay with him crawling in his bed and snuggling under that blanket with him.

Three days after he was finally okay and Eduardo had bought him new and woollier socks, Eduardo had said to Mark, 'You're my best friend too, you know. Even if you did get snot all over my favorite shirt.'

Mark sniffed at him. But he was smiling.  
==

Eduardo never did figure out if he had said 'I'm here for you' or if Mark had asked him 'I need you' first. He was pretty convinced it was him offering. Eduardo did a lot of offering of himself. Mostly to Mark. He didn't mind. It felt good. It felt like it was his place. It made him feel like he belonged somewhere when someone knew him as Mark's friend. And really, he never stopped to figure any of that out because if he did, he knew that he wasn't going to like what he saw.

Mark rarely asked anything of Eduardo. He hinted things or Mark-demanded most of the time because he didn't know how to be nice to someone. Not even someone that was in Eduardo's position and Eduardo was convinced it was just because Mark had never had anyone in that position before. It was fine, 'There isn't anything weird about it, Dustin. He's not taking advantage of anything. And besides, who was the person calling me last night because I'm the one that's twenty-one? And who is asleep in my room right now because it reeks in here? Don't talk to me about Mark. Now what are we eating? I really have to study for this.'

He still had the right priorities, and they were mostly the same as when he came to Harvard and when he was in high school and when he was eleven and when he made his monthly call to his father to recite them and his future objectives. He knew what was expected, he knew what was waiting, and he knew where he factored in to almost everyone else's lives around him. Eduardo could see the slots, like a puzzle piece, like the world was clear 3D revolving around him and everyone fit into a certain spot as soon as they got close enough or he got close enough to them. He was the only person in color. It wasn't a pretty color. More of a dull grey-brown, and he used to try to slot himself into any piece of the world he encountered because that was what he was supposed to do: Leave a mark. Eduardo Saverin was here.

Now, he waited until the picture moved around him, until he could walk slowly, fluidly through it and past it and around it to see if he was supposed to fit. He'd been wary, and he'd been tired, and until Mark. Until Mark came up to him, he hadn't thought he was ever going to really fit anywhere, so misshapen and bumpy was his puzzle piece of the world.

Until Mark, Eduardo had never once wanted to be there for anyone. He might have said, 'Yeah, I'm here. I'll help. I'll be there. Hold on. I'm coming for you.' but he never meant it. When Mark asked him, when Mark looked at him with the strange and focused intensity that only Mark had and asked him 'I need you,' Eduardo had no other answers but to be pulled in and be there for him. He had no choices. He wasn't helpless, but it felt like his choice was completely taken away and everything he had would be, could be, Mark's.

He still wasn't analyzing why that was and if that was what he wanted out of life, then. Well, he'd go with it. He didn't want to change. He didn't want different friends. He didn't want to wait outside on the steps for anyone else. He didn't want anyone else texting him at five in the morning just to tell him that they had had some sort of code breakthrough and could possibly teach their fucking eight am so what was the point of Harvard. He didn't want to laugh at anyone else's utter disregard for the world around them, their ridiculous contempt for how people lived in the everyday even if those people included himself.

There were small times, in the very dark that Eduardo was scared of himself and scared of when Mark said 'This won't last unless we do something bigger. There has to be bigger than this, Wardo.' When he fell asleep in Mark's bed and Mark was still sitting at his desk trying to discover meaning in keystrokes that Eduardo could never parse, that was only ever the background noise to some of his greatest fears.

He told Mark once 'I have a future planned for me. I have a path and a someone else's purpose and I' and then he almost had a panic attack. Then Mark almost had one because he didn't know how to deal with Eduardo not being the one to tell everyone how to handle things when they went slightly badly. Eduardo did the covering up for Mark. Mark never did the opposite. And he never tried to pat Eduardo on the back or reach out and hell, neither of them knew, really. Eduardo knew that Mark just wanted him to be back to normal again. For all the given values of normal they had together.

It was the first time Mark had told Eduardo he was there for him. It was the first time Eduardo had believed it. It was the first time that Eduardo had really only wanted to hear 'I need you.' Because 'I need you' from Mark meant something completely different to him.

Now he knew.

And when he said, 'I'm here for you.' When he said that, Eduardo knew, maybe he had known since the very first time he had knelt beside Mark, Mark not even looking at him, Eduardo half-wanting to take his hand, force his eyes to his, maybe he knew then, that when he said, 'Mark. Mark what is it? I'm here for you.' What he meant was.

What he meant was. 'I love you.'  
==

Eduardo could compartmentalize like a motherfucker. He had to be able to. It was survival. He had been doing it since adolescence. It got him through moving to a new country, a girlfriend that liked to bite and not in the fun way, never making enough, being enough, having enough, doing enough. If he didn't, if he hadn't, he'd be dead already. Expired from the sheer amount of thoughts he had at any given time.

His mind was like an Ikea dresser built for hand grenades. Pretty wrapping and great trimming and if you pull the pin, move the hair trigger, disturb the balance, bump the side, something would roll and something would catch and he'd have to start all over.

Usually by himself.

It got easier every time.

He knew where everything went now.

And he was good with numbers. Excellent even. Numbers fit together precisely and perfectly and never let him down. He never disappointed numbers, he never failed to make numbers laugh and he could manipulate them in ways he failed to manipulate anything or anyone else in his life.

He always wondered if he'd ever be good enough of a horrible person to even try half the shit that Mark did. He wanted to sometimes.

Eduardo could compartmentalize anything except. Mark started to bleed. Mark didn't fit anymore. Mark was everywhere, had been everywhere. Eduardo knew what he sounded like when he refused to sleep--petulant and fussy like a three year old, and he knew what he looked like when he first woke up--dazed and young and almost translucent, and he knew what he sounded like when. Eduardo had stopped thinking about that. Had put that in one of the Ikea drawers of his mind with a secret compartment and told himself he'd forgotten that, will never have ever remembered that.

That was why Eduardo had decided he needed some time. Time to himself, to sort himself out and put back all the ugly particle board of his life that he had torn down willingly for Mark so he could crawl inside the far corners of his mind and start pulling pins and throwing memories.

That was why it had been three weeks and Chris was standing in front of him and looking disappointed and slightly angry, but Eduardo didn't know it was because of or on behalf of him and that was why when he went back to the suite, when he sat down on the floor and doodled lopsided connected stars on the wayward notebook there, he didn't look at Mark.

Mark though, for all Mark valued himself, he was scarily perceptive and dangerously accurate, and Mark just said, 'Wardo' in kind of a shrug given voice and nudged his big toe at Eduardo's ankle.

And Eduardo, for all he was alone in his head and tucked away farther than any of them knew and more receptive to all of this than he ever let himself know, just smiled small and helplessly at the discolored ring on the table.  
==

Eduardo knew. Past the Phoenix. Past thefacebook. Past the thing with Christy. Past the chicken. Past everything else that started with 'the.' He knew past Sean, and after New York and after standing in the rain and after he missed that one small window. After he saw it closing and closing and closed. He knew he had lost. His bright 3D world collapsed around him and his puzzle piece that fit once, washed away. Still that ugly grey-brown dull color. Uglier now somehow.

He was left behind. And it wasn't even about Facebook. Not really. Not for him. He knew that Mark couldn't separate himself from it. Mark was Facebook and if Eduardo wasn't a good fit there, then he wasn't a good fit anywhere in Mark's life and that hurt probably worse than making a bad business decision with his own company. That was something he could walk away from and look back and say 'Well yeah, I was what? Twenty? I thought everything was going to last forever then, didn't I?'

It sounded like so much disappointment from his father. It sounded like so much more sympathy that he hung up on from people like his mother and Chris and. Eduardo couldn't deal. He wasn't smart enough to turn off his emotions and he wasn't smart enough to have staked out his territory beforehand and set his claim to just Mark, Mark alone, always always Mark. Now Mark came with Facebook attached and Facebook came with Sean and .03% and shame and a Mark that Eduardo didn't know anymore.

Eduardo knew, past Mark even, that there was the one moment when he could have said something. And Chris would argue with him later when they were having green beer and sushi in March. After everything and they were both back at Harvard, Chris had sought him out again because he was Chris and Eduardo was forever grateful for him. Even if they had stilted conversation at first and Chris just wanted him to admit things that Eduardo wasn't even sure he had admitted to himself yet, pocketed and mostly hidden. Chris said there were moments everyday. There were still moments if Eduardo wanted to take them because he was obviously miserable. Eduardo filed it away with everything else that didn't make sense. And he stuck to his one moment. The one time he knew he should have been more, done more, said more, the one time he actually had laughed at Mark and said 'I love you so much, you idiot' and Mark's music was so loud through the headphones that even Eduardo heard it and knew that was all he'd hear.

He remembered it differently almost every time. He imagined the scene rotated, Mark looking up, Eduardo crossing to him a fraction earlier. There was never going to be any way to change it and now here he was.

Trying to forget it. Sitting across a table and trying to be a better person. A person that wore suits when it was appropriate and not because he didn't know better and a person that knew how to carry out a lawsuit and remain civil with people, and a person that didn't have a broken heart for a variety of reasons, most of which were curable and none of which he wanted to talk about. He shoved it all away and sat up straight and was less of a disappointment, and less of an emotional person, and less giving and less happy and less. less. less. Basically he was now a Saverin his father wanted him to be except he wasn't ever going to be that either.

And when he looked at Mark. When he look at Mark sitting slumped over like he was bored and Eduardo could tell he was nervous and tired because Eduardo was always looking even now for the tiny shifts in Mark and he wondered if he had eaten and if they were going to take a break soon, when he looked at Mark, he remembered too much of the Eduardo he always wanted to be.

Except he wasn't ever going to be that anymore either.  
==

Eduardo knew it was a bad idea. Sitting in the hotel waiting for him was Mark, and even if seeing each other wasn't a big deal anymore, it was still a bad idea, Mark had asked. Eduardo had run. Well, this time he walked sedately in his expensive shoes across expensive tile and stood at the edges until Mark noticed he was there. What he needed was for Mark to feel his presence somehow. Eduardo knew that was ridiculous. Of course it was, but he didn't have much anymore.

Mark knew he was there. Eduardo could tell because he could always tell and now. Now he had gone so far past what they were and feelings. He had come out on the other side of things, on the other side where it looked like glass and was hard to see through and nothing fit together perfectly anymore because he had remembered the edges off of everything, he touched the memories and the times so much. Eduardo had put Mark back into his college space and his Facebook time and chalked it all up to being a stupid, sheltered boy. He had moved on and created spaces, new and wider, bigger, to fit all of him and his new life, goals, dreams, and hide the fact that his old memories were shelved high and tucked back far and rarely reached for except those few, and he liked it that way. He was good at that. It was what kept him alive and good at his job and on speaking terms with his father and not sick on planes when he didn't sit by a window or saw a tiny girl with too big eyes in her face and a curly ponytail.

Mark didn't say anything to him when he sat down. Eduardo said 'Hello' because he was polite and it's what he did even if it was Mark and his eyes didn't know where to look and he didn't know how to contain anything. He just breathed and waited. He was good at that. it also made him seem calm and got him things that otherwise he never would have won over.

He didn't want to wait long and he didn't want to be here, not with Mark, not again, not like this. Eduardo had pictured their reunion, of course, because it was Eduardo and it was Mark and there were quite a few nights where he didn't sleep for thinking and Mark wouldn't stay where Eduardo had put him.

Never did.

When he looked at Mark, expecting, waiting, Mark shook his head and tried to say something and ended with, 'Wardo' in that voice. Eduardo nodded because honestly he wasn't here for that. He could be Wardo with Dustin if he decided to return his call and he had been Wardo with Chris for quite a while now, so he said, 'I'm not that person anymore.' And Mark closed off and shut down and Eduardo wanted to be there for him because for all his blustery words, he never could keep Mark where he was supposed to be. Stay. 'You can't say that to me and expect me to understand what you mean.' And it was his turn to shrug. And if he wanted, his turn to walk away, even though he knew that he'd done most of the leaving up to that point.

He wasn't ready before. It was too early, too much.

Mark nodded at him and Eduardo watched his eyes watch Eduardo's face. 'I love you. And I miss you. I'm sorry I didn't tell you that then.' Eduardo didn't know what Mark saw now but he had closed off again so he knew it must not be good. Eduardo was five steps away from shattering completely at that, nothing had prepared him for that and nothing he did now, no walls or pretty wrappings could hold Mark out. Not now. 'Why now?' Because he needed to know.

Mark said, 'I catalogued your face. When we were. Depositions. And you were sitting there looking not like yourself. I tried to figure out why. And I realized I had categorized your faces. Superimposed the ones I liked best over how you looked then.' Mark looked at him now like he was trying to memorize everything Eduardo was, had been, will be. 'It made me reevaluate several things about our relationship and how I still feel about you. Because I do. Still feel about you.'

Eduardo didn't know how to be after that. He had tried carefully and precisely for quite some time to be on his own and apart and what his father needed, and there was a brief, brief time that he had tried, tirelessly, to be for Mark what he needed and. He had gotten nowhere in either situation. Nowhere all the time. Dead ends and defeat. And now.

Mark had continued to bleed. He never stayed put. Eduardo found himself all the time thinking about how Mark would react to a situation he was in, what Mark would order to eat, how he would ignore his surroundings in favor of his computer, and Eduardo had wanted to talk to him. Constantly. Mark still bled. Even after so forceful a removal as Eduardo had tried on himself.

Nothing had worked. 'I do, too.' He heard himself talking but he didn't recognize anything as him or words or real until Mark started to smile and light up the cold places in Eduardo's mind. 'I still feel about you, too.'

Mark smiled at him and Eduardo felt light, like he did when Mark said something biting and mean, like he did when he had knelt beside him, like he did when Mark made a point to seek him out. 'So that means.' Mark was talking and all Eduardo could hear was Mark, only Mark, always always Mark. 'So that means you never told me you had them to start with.'

Eduardo was terrified back then. Of losing, being left, being found wanting in some way and someone laughing at him. He was terrified now of never having any of what he wanted, what he knew he deserved.

'What would you have said then?' Eduardo swallowed and watched Mark because he could always tell when he was surprised even if he didn't look like it. 'What would we have even done then?'

Mark just said 'Wardo' but it wasn't a shrug, it was fond and it was sort of happy. It was full of everything Eduardo wanted to hear, and Mark had wanted to say, and both wanted to hope for.


End file.
